Hospitality workforce management FAQs
What operators ask before changing how they record hours. If yours is not here, call the Leeds team on 0113 350 9043.
How does it handle split shifts?▼
As two separate attendances in one day rather than one long shift with a five hour break in the middle. That sounds like a detail and it is the thing that decides whether a system works in a restaurant. Anything built around an office day will either pay somebody for the afternoon they spent at home or need a manager to correct it every week.
What about shifts that finish after midnight?▼
The hours belong to the shift somebody started, not split across two dates because the clock passed twelve. It is worth asking any supplier this directly, because it is a common source of quiet errors and it shows up in every hospitality business every weekend.
Can staff work across more than one venue?▼
Yes, on one record and one credential, with hours reported by venue. That matters for a group, because the alternative is somebody existing twice in the system and their weekly hours being calculated separately in each, which is how people end up unintentionally over their contracted hours or under their minimum wage.
How do you track employee hours across multiple hospitality sites?▼
With one system across every venue and a live view of who is in at each one. Managers can be restricted to their own department, so a general manager sees their own team rather than the whole group, while head office sees everything. Hours are reported by venue, by department or by person, and somebody who works at two sites appears once with their hours split correctly between them.
Does it work for zero-hour and casual staff?▼
Yes. Hours are recorded as they are worked, so nobody is assumed to have a fixed week, and casual staff clock in the same way as everyone else. Holiday for people on irregular hours has its own rules, set out on
GOV.UK, so it is worth agreeing how you calculate it with whoever runs your payroll when we set the system up.
Can it cope with seasonal staff surges?▼
Yes. A new starter is set up in about a minute, which matters when twenty people start for the summer on the same week, and pricing is per person with no charge per venue. When people leave, entering their leave date stops their clocking and any door access at the same time, so seasonal leavers are not left on the system with keys.
Does it do rotas?▼
Not in Syncro Connect yet. The rota module is coming later in 2026, and staff will see their shifts in the Syncro Connect app when it lands. Today Syncro records what actually happened against the shifts and schedules we set up with you. If building rotas is the main reason you are looking,
Realtime has rotas now and we will tell you which suits you better.
Do you handle tips, tronc or service charge?▼
No. Distributing service charge is a tronc arrangement with its own rules and usually its own troncmaster, and it sits outside what we do. What we can give you is the hours worked per person per venue, which is what most tronc allocations are calculated from, but the scheme itself is yours or your accountant’s.
Do we need hardware in every venue?▼
No. Staff can clock on the
Syncro Connect app on their own phone or in a browser. A terminal is worth having where a whole shift starts at once, or where you would rather clocking did not depend on personal phones. Plenty of groups run terminals in the larger sites and the app everywhere else.
Does it connect to our EPOS?▼
Not directly. Covers, sales, table management and stock belong in your EPOS and it will do them better than a workforce supplier would. If you want labour hours set against covers or sales by service, that comes from putting the two sets of figures side by side rather than from an integration, and it is worth knowing that before you buy rather than after.
Will the team actually use it?▼
Usually, and more readily than managers expect, because hospitality staff have a direct interest in accurate hours. The twenty minutes after close and the extra shift picked up at short notice are exactly what gets forgotten when hours are written up later. Where it fails is when clocking is slow or when nobody explained why it appeared.
Does it cost more per venue?▼
No. £2 per employee per month excl. VAT, or £3 with the app, regardless of how many sites they are spread across. Per-location pricing is common in this market and it penalises groups of small venues, which is most of hospitality, so it is worth asking anyone you speak to.
Are you a payroll provider?▼
No. We do not produce payslips, calculate tax or make submissions to HMRC. We record the hours and export them for
Sage, Pegasus, QuickBooks, BrightPay, Xero, IRIS and ADP, or hand them to whoever runs your payroll. If it is a payroll bureau you are looking for, we are not it and will say so early.
What happens when the wifi drops mid-service?▼
Clockings are held and upload when the connection returns, on both the app and the terminals. Nothing is lost, nobody stands at the door with a notepad, and it is not something anyone has to think about at the time.
Can we try it in one site before rolling it out?▼
Yes, and for a group it is the sensible way in. Run one venue on a
free trial, see how the team takes to it through a busy weekend, and decide from there. A system that survives a Saturday night is a system that will survive the rest.
